Islam Explained

Islam Explained

salim e-a ebrahim

Islam is NOT a political ideology, a political theology, a political system, a political venture, or a political empire. It is concerned only with the way Muslims practice their particular communal politics just as it is concerned with the way every Muslim practices his own particular politics in her own personal life.

Islam is a religion, a way of pursuing one’s personal life, continuously asserting while simultaneously acquiring deeper insights into ethics, principles, standards, morals, values, and qualities to attain in life.

A Muslim is one who witnesses the Shahadah, the assertion that God is One and Mohammad is His Prophet. After that he need not do anything more to remain in the fold of Islam. Whatever else he does or does not do is between him and God.

Shariah and Tariqah mean the same in Arabic i.e. "the way". The word Shariah has now come to denote Islamic Law but because Islam is meant for the Muslim for all time THEREFORE there is no fixed law in Islam. And THEREFORE, the Shariah changes not only with time and place but also with culture, knowledge, circumstance, belief, and intellect. And, THEREFORE the Shariah of one Muslim is NOT the Shariah of another Muslim. Pluralism is a cardinal ethic of Islam so that all people are free to choose their own ways,their own Shariah under Islam. THEREFORE, as the Tariqah (the Belief) so the Shariah (the Law).

However, the word Tariqah has come to denote the beliefs and traditions of the non-orthodox sects, the so-called heretic sects, in Islam. Well then know that I am a heretic, a non-believer in the so-called "Shariah-Islam" of the Muslim ulama, the so-called Muslim scholars, born and bred over a thousand years of medieval ignorance.

Islam is indeterminate and no Muslim should be so arrogant and intolerant as to uphold his own particular Islam as the only Islam that must be followed by all Muslims leave alone all people everywhere. Indeed, there are ethics to be upheld in Islam but these are broad, general issues and their specificity is determined by the Muslim community concerned in time, place, culture, knowledge, circumstance, belief, and intellect.

The Genius that Speaks the Aga Khan

May, 2009

The Genius that Speaks the Aga Khan
German Television documentary on Islam (part 3)
Aga Khan excerpts: total time: 10 minutes

English transcription by salim e-a ebrahim

The flash points of the modern world 
Look at the flash points of the modern world. And you go back and you ask yourself what was the origin of those flash points. Most times you will find that (they were) not driven by faith FIRST. (They were) driven by political decisions: amongst countries, amongst groups of countries, post-war situations, conflict between the Soviet world and the Western world, and so on and so forth. We have inherited these situations. What happens in that context is that when a political issue remains unresolved year after year after year, all parties involved seek new resources. Therefore they use new arguments to harness these new resources. And therefore, you get an overlay of theological dimension to these situations which was not there at the origin of these situations. So it is not that those faith issues aren’t there today. They are there today but I am going back and saying, ‘What was the origin’. And I don’t think you can blame faiths for the vast majority of the conflict situations we have today. I don’t believe that. Indeed I would go further. I would say that IF those conflicts, which were essentially political conflicts, if they were resolved, faith, interfaith, relationships would automatically find their right place.

Give individual situations the honor, the thought, the analysis, and the reflection
The “Brotherhood,” yes. But brothers can be different and they are different and they want to be different. They don’t want to be dropped into some global melting pot as though every country had the same issues to deal with, the same history, etc. That’s simply not reality. There is no such thing as ONE Islamic world just as there is no such thing as ONE Christian world. If I were to turn around to you as a Christian and I were to say to you, you know, “How do I define my relations as a Muslim with the Christian.” “Well,” you would ask me, “What do you mean by the Christian world?” because you do not think in those terminologies any more, that terminology.

So, I don’t think that you can talk about conflict between the non-Muslim world and the Muslim world. I think what you can do is you can take individual situations and give them the honor, the thought, the analysis, the reflection, that EACH one of them deserves.

Plurality is also in geography, in history, in ethnicity, in quality of life, in . . .
You have got some of the most remarkable modern states of the world today in Islamic world. About two years ago, I think it was about two years ago, a survey was carried out by some international agency as to how populations across the world view their own governments. The country that had the highest . . . (a distortion in the sound) in the world was Malaysia. It is immensely plural. And because it is so plural - in geography, in history, in ethnicity, in quality of life, in interpretations of Islam itself (transcriber's additions: in culture, in language) - I think it makes it extremely difficult for the non-Muslim world really to understand the forces that are at play. I think it is all the more difficult because if we as Muslims were to look at the Christian world and we were to define it as the Christian world i.e. a world driven by a faith, we Muslims would find it extremely difficult to work consistently with the Russian Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox, the Catholics, the Protestants, the Church of England . . . I am not going into the details but I am just trying to illustrate the complexity of pluralist societies which relate to one faith of which there are many, many different manifestations.

So that’s one of the major problems.

“Inequities in society are due to absence of educational opportunity”
First of all you educate the individual to understand better the creation of God. Therefore education is part of the manifestation of faith because you seek to understand what you would not normally understand.

Secondly, Islam is very, very rigorous, very demanding on the elimination of inequities in society and my experience, at least, is that very often inequities in society are due to absence of educational opportunity. You can practically always relate enormous poverty with absence of access to education, to health care, etc.

Not one university in the world today is specialized on high mountain populations
Thirdly, there are special needs in human society and what happened is that I have a community or communities in high mountain areas: In the Pamir, in the Karakorum, and therefore the quality of life in high mountain areas is very important both in my own community and for other populations.

If you take a Central Asian area where we are working in, there are about 25 million people who are dependent on these mountain environments. Well, believe it or not, there is not one university in the world today that is specialized on educating high mountain populations. And THAT is the reason for which this University of Central Asia was created. It was to try and create an academic focus that could serve 25 million people living in high mountain environments in that part of the world.

“The respect that is due to women is a very important factor in the Islamic world”
I would say again we are looking at a correct position for women in society and education is clearly part of that positioning of women within society. And yes, we certainly are very concerned about the quality of education that women get but we are also concerned about the moral context in which that education is given. And I think that is often an issue that is not very well understood outside the Islamic world but the respect that is due to women is a very important factor in the Islamic world and in the history of Islam and in the faith itself. And my interpretation is: the better educated the woman is the more respect she is going to get in modern civil society.

Diversifying the process by creating capacity in the Western world
This is exactly what I meant by the hiatus (“hiatus” = an “interruption”; a “gap”) in the post-Ottoman situation where the Industrialized world moved massively ahead. Much of the Islamic world and other parts of the developing world were colonized. They did not move ahead in the same way. Professions developed. Research was a major force which we did not have. So, ultimately what happened, and this is only one of the reasons, there was a process in the Islamic world which said, “If you want to be in keeping with your time and if you want to modernize your capacities and institutions you have to draw from the West.” So, there was assimilation between occidentalization and best practice.

So, what did I do? I decided that rather than try to reverse that process I had to diversify it.
And that’s why I tried to create capacity in the Western world so that Western professionals, as well as Muslim professionals being educated in the West, could serve their own communities, their own cultures and their own populations. It is a sharing of knowledge and the Western world, as far as I am aware, has been very, very generous with that knowledge. We have received massive support in all these areas: in medicine, in education, in art. Massive support.

Islam does not ALLOW the divide between faith and life
Well, I think as a Muslim we don’t make the divide between faith and life in the same way as parts of the Christian world do, not all of it but there are large parts of the Christian world which make that divide. We don’t make that divide. Islam doesn’t ALLOW you to make that divide. You reflect your belief, your faith in the FAITH of Islam not only by your attitude to the faith itself but to the society in which you live: To poverty, to the family, to ethics in your civil behavior. It is part of your EVERY day life. You LIVE the faith. And I think that’s why many, many Muslims, not me but others, including myself, define the faith as, “A way of life” because it IS a way of life.

SHARI’AH LAWS ARE PLAGIARIZED FROM THE BIBLE!

by Sheikh Sultan M. As-Salameh of Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.

The Muslims of the world are practicing much of the Judeo-Christian beliefs largely from the Old Testament. The ‘religion’ considered and practiced as Islam today has degenerated from the time of Prophet Muhammad (S). In the beginning there was a very simple Deen (religion) of Islam revealed to the Prophet (S), which was fully encapsulated in just the one Book, Al-Qur’an.

For example, the covering of the head for women which has become a point of much discussion in the West, is actually not found in the Qur’an. Therefore, it is not a part of the original teachings of the Prophet. It has been taken from the Christian Bible and incorporated into Islam.

Similarly many of the beliefs that are considered Islamic are actually derived from the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The early converts from Judaism and Christianity gradually incorporated their old beliefs into Islam to such an extent that the ‘Islam’ of today is often a verbatim manifestation of the Bible. None of these Biblical teachings were known to the Prophet and they cannot be found in the Qur’an at all. But the ‘scholars’ of Islam are unanimous in accepting these beliefs as part of Islam today. Other than the head covering for women, our other practices like:

The stoning to death for adultery

The stoning to death for apostasy

The circumcision of males

The wearing of beards for men

The dietary prohibition of many types of food

The displaying of holy writings on the wall

The belief that woman is created from man

The injunction against graven images like statues, sculptures and other representations of human and animal life forms

The religious injunction that menstruating women are spiritually unclean

The ritualized blessing of “Amen”

The animal sacrifice (Aqeeqah) at the birth of children

All these things are derived from the Christian and Jewish Scriptures. This list is by no means exhaustive. These beliefs are NOT found anywhere in the Qur’an which is the only authentic teaching of Prophet Muhammad (S). However, these teachings can be found in very exact detail in the Christian Bible and the Jewish Scriptures.

1. HEAD COVER FOR WOMEN ORIGINATES FROM THE BIBLE:

The wearing of the head covering for women is not part of the Prophet’s teachings and is not found in the Qur’an. It is a belief and a practice that was taken by the early Muslim scholars from the Christian Bible (1 Cor 11:5-13) and has now become part and parcel of today’s Islam. The West has no problem with Catholicism putting its nuns in head cover. In Europe Catholic schools still encourage young girls to take up the wearing of the Catholic head-cover.

2. CIRCUMCISION IS DERIVED FROM THE BIBLE:

The Sunni and Shi’a ‘Muslims’ believe male circumcision to be mandatory and they practice it universally. The truth is that God and the Prophet never asked the Muslims to circumcise anyone.

But where does the Muslim belief in circumcision come from? Once again the answer lies in the Bible. The Covenant of Circumcision is mandated in the Bible.

Genesis 17:14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

Later Muslims have found this belief acceptable and have incorporated it into their Muslim practices.

[A health note: Circumcision is a part of the Abrahamic tradition. The Qur’an neither ordains it nor forbids it. Allama Aslam Jairajpuri (d.1955) in his Tareekh-ul-Ummat states that Muhammad (S) was circumcised on the seventh day of his birth, according to the Arab tradition (Pg 48). Some historians have written that he was born circumcised. Medically speaking, one out of 1,000 males is born without a foreskin. Circumcision is a health beneficial practice e.g. cancer is seldom encountered in a circumcised penis and the hygiene factor is obvious.]

3. PUNISHMENT FOR ADULTERY:

The recent cases of stoning women to death for adultery in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are laws that are not from the Qur’an. God and the Prophet never taught Muslims to stone anyone to death for any crime. The words Shariah Law are not even mentioned in the Qur’an. The law of stoning to death for adultery is taken from the Bible. See Deut 22:20-21.

If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death (Lev 20:10). The Qur’an also prescribes a punishment for adultery, but it is a scourge of 100 lashes (Quran 24:2).

4. THE PUNISHMENT OF APOSTASY:

The United Nations Charter on Human Rights guarantees freedom of religion. This right was first guaranteed in the Qur’an. As the words of the Quran 2:256 inform, there is absolutely no compulsion or coercion in religion. In Islam human beings have the right to believe or disbelieve as they choose. Muslims fought only to assert their own right to be left alone to worship according to their conscience and not according to societal dictate: “So, fight them (the aggressors) only until there is no more harassment.” Quran 2:193

The Biblical teachings, however, say that anyone who blasphemes or becomes an apostate from his faith must be punished with death by stoning (Lev 24:16). Included among those who must be put to death by stoning are the deviants. (Deut 13:5-10)

5. THE TALIBAN’S DESTRUCTION OF STATUES IN BAMIYAN:

We recall with dismay the hue and cry when Taliban destroyed the priceless ancient treasures in Bamiyan. Under the guise of religion the Taliban insisted that the statues of the Buddha had to be destroyed. The Taliban based their actions on Islamic beliefs that have actually been absorbed from the Christian Bible. It is a Biblical teaching that graven images must not be made, and if made, they must be destroyed. (Deut 27:15, 4:16). The Qur’an does not say anywhere that statues or graven images are forbidden or that they must be destroyed.

6. The Qur’an Does Not Forbid Pictures, Paintings And Sculptures For Décor:

The Quran boldly asserts that a Prophet of God had at one time decorated his kingdom with statues, sculptures, paintings and images without any disapproval from God: “They worked for him (King Solomon) as he desired, making forts, statues, sculptures, paintings and images, pools, and boilers well-dug into the ground….” _Quran 34:13.

Yet, Muslim orthodoxy, unfortunately, declares all fine arts as forbidden.

07. THE WEARING OF BEARDS:

Keeping of the beard is again not the teachings of the Prophet or the Qur’an but is taken from the Christian Bible.

Leviticus 19:27: Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.

21:5: Priests must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their beards or cut their bodies.

Samuel 2: 10:5: When David was told about this, he sent messengers to meet the men, for they were greatly humiliated. The king said, “Stay at Jericho till your beards have grown, and then come back.”

The Muslims are told in the Qur’an that they should not follow the path of the Christians and the Jews. The remarkably absurd in the world to day is that the Christian world has disassociated with these worthless traditions while the Muslims have perversely imbibed them to the point that they are now considered traditions of Muslim origin!

[I have edited for a better reading experience. _se]

Belief

Beliefs of human beings take place in 4 dimensions:
1. the material dimension
2. the emotional dimension
3. the intellectual dimension
4. the spiritual dimension
When these four dimensions merge, a human being becomes a powerful force. When a whole community has these four dimensions merge, then we have a new world order.
This did not happen in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. Had the Jews accepted the teachings and the leadership of Jesus as the Messiah then the Jews with the Jesus-ethic would have conquered the Romans emotionally, intellectually and spiritually long before the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Jesus-follower of his own accord three centuries later bringing the material power of the Roman Empire in tow.
And then?
In the 7th Century CE a man named Mohammad the Trustworthy (Al-Amin) began preaching a new belief system to the Pagan Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula. He was persecuted relentlessly and ex-communicated by his people, the pagan citizens of the Arabian city state of Mecca. He believed he had been called upon to deliver the Message (the Quran) from the nameless God Al-Lah (The God) of Arabian folklore. His belief gave him three qualities to an exceptional degree not given to any ordinary human being:
1. tenacity
2. fortitude
3. strength (in his physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual confrontations)
His preaching was, in essence, similar to that of any other Biblical Prophet in that he emphasized ethics and ethical behavior. As he gained adherents and a base of operations, he then embarked into changing the traditions, the culture and the ethics of his people from that of pagans with NO belief in an hereafter to that of a people with:
1. Belief in the hereafter,
2. Belief in a Divine accounting of human action on this earth, and
3. In Divine intervention, whenever and however, Al Lah (God) decides according to His Will.
The believer surrenders his own will to that of the One God and in so doing he becomes a Muslim, the one who surrenders his will; and his religion is then Islam, the religion of those who have surrendered their will to God.
And then?
And that gave rise to 1000 years of Muslim civilizations that ruled the known world from the 7th Century to the 15th Century and then huge parts of the world up to the 20th Century.
So, you see, it all has to do with belief in the end.